Ecommerce Case Study: IARR 2019 Conference
In June this year, faculty and students from Carleton’s Psychology Department are hosting the 2019 Mini-conference of the International Association for Relationship Research (IARR). The faculty member in charge of the logistics for this conference, Professor Cheryl Harasymchuk, contacted ITS when she heard we offered a service that allowed her to process registrations and take payment for these, all online. We were able to meet with the client, hear their needs and complete the registration pages for the event all in good time. The client was more than pleased with the process. In Cheryl’s words,
Organizing the online logistics of a conference is unchartered territory for me and so it was comforting to have such a responsive and helpful team of people guiding me each step of the way from developing my website, brainstorming abstract submission ideas, and designing a registration site. The value of the services provided was excellent (i.e., it felt like I was getting the royal treatment with a shoestring budget)!
How does this process move forward so that Professor Harasymchuk and her team can easily accept registrations and payments?
The initial step was for Web Services to meet with her to discuss the conference requirements, outline the abilities and limitations of the ecommerce and registration services, and to explain the costs associated with our services.
These meetings are generally not very long, and some clients question why we need to meet at all prior to initiating an ecommerce project. There are three main reasons:
- explaining the price structure of the service we provide means there are no nasty surprises (In fact it is just one nice surprise: the fees are refreshingly great value!)
- hearing about the requirements of the conference often allows us to offer other great services (that don’t cost a cent) – there will be more about this later on!
- outlining exactly what the service offers
As Professor Harasymchuk was very well organized and ahead of the game, we initially sat down 18 months before the conference for this initial meeting. By meeting this far ahead of time we were able to meet all the requirements. What Web Services discovered was that the IARR 2019 conference also required a method to accept abstracts for presentations to be delivered at the conference. Cheryl had been wondering how she would be accept these abstracts in a streamlined manner. At the meeting I told her about the free service from ITS which includes the creation of bespoke forms which can accept file uploads and cover all the other needs of a conference which needs to consider applications to present from all over the world. Professor Harasymchuk was also pleased with the price of the ecommerce service.
We met again later in the year to go over the details of both the abstract submission and the registration forms. I built both these and allowed the IARR 2019 team to test them and request alterations.
We in Web Services strive to hear what our clients need and come up with ideas to meet their requirements. According to professor Harasymchuk,
Web Services listened to my conference-related concerns, offered suggestions, and was very quick to respond to my queries (all while being patient and gracious). It really felt like we were working together to develop a product that would enhance the promotion and logistics of my conference. I consider Web Services to be an integral part of my conference planning team (and, ultimately, the success of the event).
(Although adjunct to the work of the Ecommerce Service, building the abstract submissions form was part of the (free!) forms service Web Services offer all its clients. In developing the form for Cheryl’s conference, we learned a lot about what abstract submissions require and worked out some useful features which can be reused for future conferences.)
In December we more or less completed the registration form, ready for its launch in April. In the past 2 weeks over 50 registrations have been taken and paid for from an estimated total number of registrations – with still two months to go to the conference.
**Update: before even early bird registration has finished, IARR2019 has already reached 80% of its revenue target for the conference!**
If you are interested in engaging the CU Ecommerce Service you can complete this form or contact the ITS Service Desk.
And a big thank you to Cheryl Harasymchuk for allowing us to feature her great conference as our case study! You can visit the IARR 2019 website to learn more.